← All films
FeatureMatineeInternational

Out Laws

Three Queer activists confront the colonial laws that criminalise their lives — and a rising global backlash determined to silence them.

Out Laws travels between Namibia and the UK to follow three LGBTQIA+ activists at the forefront of dismantling the colonial-era laws that still criminalise Queer people today.

In Namibia, Friedel Dausab risks his safety taking on the state in a landmark case that could overturn a sodomy law enforced for more than a century. Awaiting the ruling, he travels to London to join Raven Gill (Barbados) and Rosanna Flamer-Caldera (Sri Lanka) to trace the colonial origins of the laws that criminalise them — and to deliver a landmark speech at the heart of the empire that exported them.

Rich historical storytelling reveals how anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation was engineered through empire, weaponised by religion, and is now revived by new alliances of far-right actors and political opportunists. Yet at its core, Out Laws is a story of resilience: a vibrant scrapbook aesthetic of archival collage and music-driven sequences that centres joy, defiance and Queer futurity.

  • Made with activists, not about them — co-authored with litigants shaping landmark legal reforms in Namibia, Sri Lanka and Barbados.
  • Tagline: Criminalised for love. Fighting back with pride.

Watch

Official trailer

Gallery

Film stills

Friedel Dausab outside the Houses of Parliament in London, from Out Laws (credit: Emily N. Kanga)Activists marching at London Pride behind a rainbow banner reading 'We Are Not Criminals', from Out Laws (credit: Emily N. Kanga)Behind the scenes in the UK: Friedel Dausab seated for an interview in front of an orange backdrop with camera and boom mic (credit: James Lewis)